Project Abstract Dillard University is an accredited Minority Serving Institution (MSI) and Historically Black institution occupying in the City of New Orleans. Since 1869, Dillard has been committed to providing students with a quality four-year liberal arts education. Dillard proposes the NIMHD Endowment Program, entitled Capacity-Outreach-Research Endowment (CORE) to empower students and faculty in introducing and promoting an educational culture that challenges, motivates, inspires and prepares students and faculty alike, to make major contributions in changing the landscape of human health and health disparities. Because of the devastation of Katrina, and more recently the Gulf Oil Spill, Dillard University finds itself in a unique and unprecedented situation to address health issues surfacing from these events. The long term goal of CORE is to increase Dillard's research and institutional capacity to conduct minority health and health disparities research in the Gentilly neighborhood, New Orleans area, nationally and globally. The short term objectives of CORE in priority order are to: (1) advance an interdisciplinary approach for establishing a model for students and faculty to communicate, collaborate and coordinate research interest for reducing and eliminating health disparities, (2) research the environmental conditions and health disparities needs of the Gentilly community, the New Orleans area, and the global community, (3) strengthen the research infrastructure by offering a centralized Core research facility providing state-of-the art instrumentation and research technologies for students and investigators which will allow for unique cross educational-training experience of exploring innovative research approaches for addressing health disparities. To achieve our goals and objectives, Dillard proposes the following specific aims to: (1) enhance the academic environment by recruiting and retaining acclaimed leaders and experts in the respective fields of environmental health; global health; nursing and public health, (2) enhance the academic environment by recruiting and retaining motivated and committed racial and ethnic minority students, (3) strengthen Dillard's research infrastructure by linking the proposed endowment CORE program with the Dillard Center of Excellence, which will maximize resources across multi-disciplinary areas and inspire innovative approaches for health disparities research, and (4) offer a unique hands on curriculum concentration framed around the needs of the communities that will create and strengthen challenging courses in health disparities and research. The Dillard strategy will emphasize interdisciplinary collaborations and approaches to integrate data, methodologies, perspectives, and concepts in order to advance fundamental understanding of how to reduce health disparities.